Threats merit serious response, arrests

It is unfortunate that at least three area high school students have been arrested for threats of violence at their schools. It is far worse that their threats and reports of threats, whether real or hoax, have terrorized the students and staffs of those schools.

Unfortunate though it may be, we can’t help but be pleased that police have arrested them. Law enforcement agencies are right to take this seriously and to treat it seriously. The students who may find it amusing to frighten and disrupt their schools need to know there are real consequences.

The damage they are doing to their fellow students is real. Jail time needs to be just as real.

In the latest incident, a 17-year-old Port Huron High School senior is facing a 20-year felony for allegedly threatening to shoot several students. In today’s anxious age, threatening to shoot someone is not kid stuff. She is being treated as an adult, and the police department is asking that she be charged with threatening a terrorist act, a 20-year felony.

A 14-year-old boy is facing the same charge after threatening to shoot up Central Middle School. His threat was posted on a professional football player's Instagram account. He remains locked up at the Macomb County juvenile detention facility. A 15-year-old Fort Gratiot boy who claimed seeing a threat to Port Huron Northern High School, a threat later found nonexistent was arrested and later released into his parents' custody. He has an April 30 court date.

While we hope it has made an impression on area students, we know that threat of arrest and punishment, however, has never been a perfect tool to deter crime. Law enforcement agencies and school officials elsewhere have suggested other deterents. One idea is added a day to the school year every time classes are disrupted by a threat. We’ve never understood the logic of punishing the whole class for the transgressions of an individual. In this case, it would only add to the turmoil and anxiety teenage terrorists hope to spread. It might also discourage students who see or hear something from saying something.

Another idea is to penalize parents whose students are involved in threats. Or, as one school principal described it, encouraging parents to do the parenting at home instead of relying on schools and police to do it. We worry if it isn’t too late for that.

Schools, police and students victimized by this epidemic of fear are taking it seriously.

Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposal sounds serious, but the math doesn’t work out. He has proposed a $20 million package to bolster security in the state’s schools. It sounds like real money, but it is only enough to hire 200 school resource officers for Michigan’s more than 850 school districts.